What's sex got to do with your bank balance?

A new research conducted by Swansea University, revealed that wealth may drive preference for short-term relationships.

Dr Andrew G. Thomas who led the research explained, "Not all people prefer long-term committed relationships. Evolutionary psychologists believe that whether someone prefers a short-term relationship over a long-term one depends partly on their circumstances, such as how difficult it might be to raise children as a single parent".

The team of researchers analysed relationship preferences of 151 heterosexual male and female volunteers, of which 75 were men and rest women.

They were asked to look at pictures of 50 potential partners and then indicate their preference of long-term and short-term relationship with each of them.

In the second phase, the participants were shown a series of images of luxury items related to wealth, such as sports cars, jewellery, mansions, and luxury locations.

After doing so, the participants were asked to revisit the images and mark them again on the basis of term for a potential relationship.

It was found that after viewing the wealthy images, both female and male participants marked more partners for short-term relationship as compared to the previous result - a stark 16 percent raise.

Thomas noted, "Importantly, when those circumstances change, we expect people to change their preferences accordingly. What we have done with our research is demonstrate this change in behaviour, for the first time, within an experimental setting. After participants were given cues that the environment had lots of resources, they became more likely to select individuals for a short-term relationship".

The researchers also found that the preferences were also changed when being faced with images of dangerous animals and infant-interaction scenarios.

The study is published in the latest issue of Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Lead image -- a still from Jism 2 -- published for representational purposes only.